


Hallelujah Hallelujah (x2)

by Cheesecloth



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Donna Noble Remembers, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, plenty of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheesecloth/pseuds/Cheesecloth
Summary: There is nothing more necessary in my life than to find a way for Donna to return, perfectly fine.
Kudos: 14
Collections: Aliens & Time Machines





	Hallelujah Hallelujah (x2)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [aliens_and_time_machines_prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/aliens_and_time_machines_prompts) collection. 



Life was a big, tremendous, annoying pile of unfulfillment.

Donna was really feeling stretched thin.

Nothing was working. She tried enriching her life, from finding new and unusual jobs to exploring a mother-flippin’ _tundra_ after a trip to the _Sahara_ , as well as hiring a life coach and trying to sort - whatever this is - out. But to no avail.

And when she sleeps, it's even worse! How can a restless waking life not be as traumatizingly empty as dreams?

She screams into the void when her eyes have finally shut and the tired world drifts away. The echoes crash against some wall and bounce back. She can never reach this hidden wall. It’s impossible and yet its always there.

_Not impossible, just a little unlikely._

Distraught by it all, she clings to herself with her hands deep in her hair and her legs tucked against her.

She lets out one more scream, but it's weak. It doesn’t even echo.

Why does nothing work? She really thought traveling would spice up her life.

Her old fiancé never calls. She can’t even find him!

And her parents! Every time she brings any of this up to them, she expects a different reaction. She expects her grandfather to dawdle about with his telescope as he gives her new suggestions. She expects her mother to groan and tirelessly list reasons why Donna should get a job and stay there, or find a new fiancé, or just, anything.

Instead, they always give her the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, pitifully sorrowful eyes. All those adjectives aren’t even enough to describe how much it pains her to see it. She stopped talking about it.

The dreamless void is where she can really unleash all the aimless frustration.

“What can I do,” she whispers. “How do I stop this- no. How do I even start? What am I missing? Why does it always feel like there’s something missing?”

She hasn’t yelled for hours but her voice is hoarse.

She looks up and stares into the deep darkness. Somewhere, there, is a wall. And she just can’t- she really just can’t. Her instincts are constantly conflicting.

Tear it down! Let her _feel_!

Stay away from it! Be safe, stay safe, breathe.

She stands and stomps her foot, just for the release of it.

“Someone please just help me!” She sobs to the only one who can truly hear her. Herself.

_I create myself._

“H-hello?” She sniffles. Donna thought she heard a whisper of something. Something that wasn’t her.

She awoke with a gasp.

The achingly familiar bedroom greeted her. It ached because it was dull. It had no feeling to it anymore. No connection, like with a lot of things she felt these days.

She reached for her phone, grumbling all the way. Right as she was about to open up an app, an amber alert blared out like an air siren. She jumped and tossed her phone as a reflex.

She didn’t pick it up when it finally fell silent. She had glanced at the screen for just the briefest moment before the sound had hit her.

It had been two words.

Bad Wolf.

There are no wolves here anymore. Why would- did one get out of the zoo? Did the zookeepers name it “Bad Wolf”?

She closed her eyes, unwilling to deal with it anymore. Her heart was still racing.

“Sorry for the scare.”

Donna let out an unholy scream.

There was a woman, blonde and wild. Her eyeshadow was dark as anything, and it gave her a peculiar look.

But even if it was a friendly one, it didn’t matter. There was a stranger! In her room! Sitting on her wee little desk that Donna always complained about with her mother- no, wait, something’s wrong. The desk is much taller than it was a second ago... And she was swinging her feet!

“What the _hell_ are you doing in my room?”

The woman merely looked at her own nails and picked at them. “Nothing much these days,” she said nonchalantly. “Or any days.”

“Well who are you, and again, what the absolute, smacking _hell_ are you doing here!”

The woman’s head was still lowered to her hands but her dark eyes stared into Donna. “I’m here to help. You live a fragmented life of things that used to be of which you cannot see.” She stood up and strolled toward Donna at a slow-crawling pace. “No, you do not live anymore. If you saw what must not be seen, you would shatter. But it is ruining you all the same. Tearing you apart with the stark absence of the most dangerous thing.

“Survive without it, but no, not live.” Her voice was incredibly piercing. It wasn’t loud or anything. In fact, she spoke with a pleasant, almost deep cadence. A crackle, a song. A river.

But it cut through her like power.

Whoever or whatever this creature was- Donna never believed the hocus people say about aliens in London, but her? This woman- _entity_ in front of her?

Donna shuddered. Her instincts were so going haywire that there was no point in consulting them.

“Are you those words? Bad Wolf?” Donna finds herself asking.

“Yes.” Bad Wolf hasn’t blinked once.

“Can you really help me?” Even with the danger of associating with...her...was not enough to keep the desperation from crawling out.

“Yes.”

Donna truly looked at the entity. There’s something drawing her to Bad Wolf. A dangerous but necessary familiarity.

“Then help me.”

Donna is startled backward when Bad Wolf’s eyes begin to glow starlight yellow. Out of nothing, a circular object appears in her hands. She clicks the side of it, and it opens to reveal a... fob watch?

The patterns on it are intricate, but there’s no time to appreciate it. There are golden streams surrounding Donna, and she lets out a pained scream, as though every atom in her body was split and rearranged after plopping in and out of existence. Changing her.

It must have gone on for hours, for when Donna reawakened- had she fainted from the excruciating pain?- Bad Wolf was running a soothing hand over Donna’s sweaty forehead. She even had a pitying expression.

“It is over, Donna Noble. You are closer to yourself again than you have been in a long time.”

“What did you do to me,” she asked, dizzy.

“I created for you something called a biodata module. It is stored within this device.” She strung out a thin chain and latched the shining thing to the fob watch, creating a necklace. “It is yours. Though, for your safety, I have modified it greatly. You are not human anymore, Donna. And you will never be again. This assures it so.”

“Not- What- Now what the bleeding hell did you do- Not human! Preposterous! What am I then?”

Bad Wolf’s dark eyes crinkled. “You are DoctorDonna. Your new essence has made you a true timelord, DoctorDonna.”

“A what? You’re not making any- oh drat it all! Just make some sense already!” She scowled.

But Bad Wolf shook her head. “Are you willing to endure more pain? Even for the briefest of moments?”

Donna’s whole body protested. Her heart- now that she came to think of it, it was beating awfully funny- shuddered. She waited a few moments to gather her thoughts.

“Will it mean that you’ll finally make sense?”

Bad Wolf smiled. “Yes.”

She was right. The pain was brief, but it was also an eternity. Tears flowed freely from her face, and she felt choked-up on every bottled emotion she’s felt since the wall in her mind had blocked her from...herself. She closed her eyes tightly, and she was shaking.

“Doctor...”

She opened them, and Bad Wolf- _Rose_?- was gone.

She rushed to her grandfather’s room but it was empty. She checked her mother’s. Empty.

She hurried down the steps to the kitchen, where they both sat around a plate of biscuits and some tea.

They both gave out a startled squeak when she interrupted their weary stares with a very tight hug.

“Donna, what’s wrong?” Her grandpappy asked.

“Wrong? What’s right?” Despite the tears, there was the biggest grin on her face.

“Donna?”

“I remember! And it won’t hurt me, it can’t! I remember the Doctor! I remember who I am!”

She explained everything to them, and they were soon crying as well.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear any of the screamings? There was a whole lot up there.” Donna wonders.

“We’ve been down here drinking our worries away in tea and baking biscuits. Didn’t hear a peep,” her mother said.

“Oh, they look delightful.” She reaches for one, the _everything_ that happened wore her down quite a lot and her new timelord body needed some right good sustenance.

Grandpa makes a sheepish face. “With all the stress, I thought I’d try my hand at baking biscuits.”

Donna immediately drops her arm.

“Oh, I don’t blame you,” her grandpappy says with mirth. “Worse than a biohazard, these are.”

“I think they’re fine,” her mother says, swallowing the last quarter of her biscuit that she started hours ago with a blank, polite, English face.

“Really?” Both Donna and Grandpa ask.

“Absolutely not,” she said once she finished the last morsel. “I just thought that its nice he try something new for once other than his telescope.

“Nonsense!” Donna whispers in horror.

Grandpa shrugs. “I was going to try to make some cupcakes next, and decorate them to look like planets.” He ignored their uncertain laughter. “Donna, how are you going to tell the Doctor?”

The wind blows up a mighty breeze. Nothing more than that really. But its enough to fill the silence.

“I’ll find a way,” she decides. “I’ll start today if you don’t mind.”

“But it’s half past midnight, dear!” Her mother admonishes.

“You live your heart out, my dear darling granddaughter,” Grandpa says with a teary grin.”I thought you should get some rest. You have been through so much this night.”

Mother scoffs at him. But she nods and turns to Donna again with a hopeful gaze. “You may not find the wretched man for a while, Donna. What will you do in the meantime?”

Donna laughs.

“I will create myself.”


End file.
